#lets be real... animators got lazy design vise!!!

[chiptrillino-art]

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just some kuruk tests

[megacircuit9universe]

Escape Velocity

If the Earth were bigger... say ten percent bigger, then people would be, on average, smaller... because the stronger gravity would make it impractical to stand, say, six feet tall.

In reality, we rarely see humans who are seven feet or taller, and the few that we do see, have extreme difficulty pumping the blood through their bodies, against the force of our normal gravity. 

And there are also issues with our feet and spines not being very well designed for... well, honestly... even normal sized humans, let alone ones who are seven feet or taller.

In Earth’s past, we’ve had enormously large land animals, such as brontosaurs, or even the T-Rex, but these creatures evolved at a time when the atmosphere was far richer in oxygen than it is now... allowing them more energy to power much larger hearts and other large muscular structures.

If Jurassic Park were real... most of the dinos would either die of hypoxia in adulthood, or... just not get that big.

Still, we humans have evolved for today's oxygen levels and... given Earth’s relatively unchanging mass, and therefore unchanging gravitational pull... we don’t get a lot taller than six feet.

An Earth 10% larger, would mean maybe five feet was the max.  I haven’t done the actual math on that but the point is that the bigger the Earth, the smaller the humans... until at some point, there is an Earth so massive, that the humans can’t be humans anymore, because they’d be too small to have brains that can do the things human brains do.

Not that brain size is everything... because it’s not.  Even humans with relatively small brains can be just as intelligent, or even as genius as humans with big brains (and humans with big brains can be morons) but there still is some lower limit on the size of a brain case that can house the computing power of a humanoid brain.

Maybe on a planet much larger than Earth, evolution would be more efficient in the way it gets to that level of computing power in even a tiny brain case... possibly so...

But those intelligent humanoids... let’s say they are only a foot tall in adulthood, but every bit as clever as we are... would have a much harder time ever getting into space than we do... because the escape velocity of their planet would be much greater.

You may be thinking here... well, but they would weigh less, so their ships would weigh less, so it wouldn’t be a problem.

That would be wrong, because they would weigh the same as we do.

At least if the analogy is one to one, then a twelve-inch tall human on a much larger Earth would experience the same pull of gravity that we six-foot humans do on our own planet. 

In other words... everything would “weigh” more.

All the elements of the periodic table have their specific “weights” as determined by the number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus... So all of the carbon they are made of... all of the steel... the copper... the gold... used to make their rockets or satellites... would require more energy (per molecule) to accelerate to escape velocity than the same materials require here at home.

The energy, on the other hand, available from burning any of he fuels we burn as propellants... would be the same.

Yes, they would probably use less overall material, and on a larger planet they’d have more raw materials to mine but... the mining of all that material would take more work, thanks to gravity and... in the end the scales tip toward our little humans on a giant Earth having an extremely difficult time launching anything into orbit... even if they had all the math down cold.

And such a people might decide it makes no economic sense to bother with space. The cost just outweighs the benefit, so... forget it.

Where am I going with this?

Well... the reverse is also true that humanoids living on a smaller Earth will “weigh” the same as us, even though they could be much larger... and will, all things considered, have a much easier time with escape velocity... possibly to the point where space travel is a no-brainer, because it’s just so easy to do, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.

When we’re thinking about earth like planets in the universe, the earliest of which could only have formed several million years before ours (given that several generations of stars had to pass before there was enough higher elements to form earth like planets)...

...and when we’re talking about which ones may have given birth to humanoids who got the space faring jump on everybody else... using their millions of years of lead time to create vast intergalactic empires... 

...we are probably talking about humanoids who evolved on “sub earths.”

I use that term to contrast the common term, “super earth,” that is applied to exoplanets we’ve discovered which are similar to Earth, but a good deal larger.

Everything we’ve examined about the Earth Moon relationship, and how it has been critical to human evolution... could work with a smaller Earth, that had a comparably smaller moon.

As long as the two planets in such a double planetary system are roughly the same size, and distance with respect to one another... all the same benefits will be present, such as a stable axis, and a relatively slow rotation period.

So... while we don’t know how common such double planetary systems are... i.e. ones like the Earth and Moon in a star’s habitable zone... we CAN safely assume that within that subset... our particular instance is most likely near the middle... in terms of size.

Half the earth/moon systems out there are bigger than ours... with the biggest being the most rare... but half are smaller...

...and somewhere in that smaller half is some perfectly ideal pocket where, if humanoids evolve... they just jump right out into space as soon as somebody gets the idea to try it... the way we’ve done with aircraft.

Now, there ARE issues with a small planet holding on to a decent atmosphere, such that it can give rise to humanoids.

Without as much gravity to hold the air down, it would need a stronger magnetic field... which is hard to do if you don’t have as much mass in the molten core... which is also cooling off faster than a larger molten core would cool.

But... all things considered again... there’s still a nice pocket there where slightly smaller earths than ours, with slightly smaller moons, could still have enough mass and magnetosphere to allow humanoid evolution... yet would have an escape velocity low enough to make space exploration a relative walk in the park.

It’s important to remember here, that once you’ve established a decent orbital infrastructure of space stations and moon bases... the resources of your whole solar system are easy pickings.

Establishing that orbital infrastructure is the hard part, because of all the hardware and fuel you first have to launch off the surface... not to mention all the resupply of food for all the people in your space stations before they get to the point where they can produce their own food.

For humanoids living on a sub-earth, creating that orbital infrastructure could be as economical as what we’ve done here, colonizing the continents and establishing all our surface level metros, with their air and shipping routes.

If our escape velocity wasn’t such a costly hurdle... we could have whole factories in orbit by now, along with colonies on both the Moon and mars.

What would our alien visitors think of that?

But instead, what they see is a planet of humans who... because our escape velocity is just a tad too burdensome... have all but given up on space travel...

Preferring to settle for orbital communication satellites, a token space station, and a smattering of robots to go and take pictures of planets we can’t afford to visit first hand.

This must be why we are so fond of our whimsical little airplanes... because we know the sky... the blue part with the clouds in it... really is the limit.

But that’s an atmosphere with some issues... growing hotter as we pump out more CO2 by the ton... which can happen when you don’t take your industry off planet.

They see a world of humans using their most advanced tech... such as their nukes... to war over limited resources on the surface... rather than just get out into space where there are unlimited resources.

And they see us slowly destroying our planet with the waste that comes from using up those ground resources... as well as all the destruction that comes from all the warring.

They’ve probably seen this before.

This is just what you get from a planet of this particular mass.

People on planets of this particular mass are always bitching and moaning about how expensive it is to get into space, like jobless pot-smoking kids in their late twenties, still living with Mom and Dad, whining about their crushing student debt, and the shitty gig economy.  

Wah Wah Wah...

Not to bash young adults. I’m not. That’s just what the Aliens think, because they fail to recognize how their ancestors came from “escape velocity privilege.” And they should be helping us, but they don’t care.

They don’t care, because centuries of space travel has made them comfortable, and lazy... with their nearly useless limbs up there in near-zero G, eating their bon bons.

So... despite the fact that the universe as a whole may be teeming with intelligent life... we really are on our own at this juncture in our history.  

And as much as everybody squabbles about racism, pollution, climate change, and economic disparity... pointing fingers this way and that way at what party, or corporation is to blame...

The only sustainable solution for the human race is to invest in space.  

Given our body plans, and our brains, space is our legacy. 

And that legacy is ours to lose.